


You're A Cruel God, George Lucas

by geneeste



Series: Obscure References [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Humor, Obscure References Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:39:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geneeste/pseuds/geneeste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a reason she couldn’t remember at this point, they had agreed to go slowly. The definition of “going slowly” hadn’t been discussed, which was something she was really, really beginning to regret. Because in this building - unlike the widely accepted definition of the phrase in the rest of the world - ‘going slowly’ apparently meant ‘speaking on the phone sporadically and randomly groping each other in any available closet.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're A Cruel God, George Lucas

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bike Reclamation Day](https://archiveofourown.org/works/232429) by [holdouttrout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/holdouttrout/pseuds/holdouttrout). 



> And the madness continues. I'm speaking literally, of course.

Things had been going so well.

Or so she’d thought for the first couple of weeks.

But it’d been a month since Bicycle Reclamation Day, and her relationship with Jack had been steadily progressing towards…

Well, not much of anything.

For a reason she couldn’t remember at this point, they had agreed to go slowly. The definition of “going slowly” hadn’t been discussed, which was something she was really, really beginning to regret.

Because in this building - unlike the widely accepted definition of the phrase in the rest of the world - ‘going slowly’ apparently meant ‘speaking on the phone sporadically and randomly groping each other in any available closet.’

Granted, they were busy. She was battling her way through midterms, and he was in the process of renovating the fifth floor apartments for leasing. But how was it possible that they hadn’t been on one date in _four weeks_?

She was starting to get a little paranoid. If not a little desperate.

She thought maybe she’d…what were all those notes doing there?

She’d gotten to her apartment and there - taped on the door and around the frame - were eleven or twelve notes in varying shapes and colors.

She pulled them down and read the one on top of the pile.

_Hi,_

_The heater has stopped working altogether since the last time we spoke. Please get it to as soon as you can, as winter is quickly approaching._

_Thanks,  
R. Cooper, apt. 120_

And then there was the one written in permanent marker on the back of what appeared a piece of a Fruit Loops box.

_hello again_

_i was wondering if we could talk about me putting up a dish on the balcony_

_u told me not to ask u about it again unless the red sox won the penant, but that happened so i thought itd be ok to bring it up_

_anyway thanks  
mullie in 402_

…Huh?

Sam let herself in. “Liz!” she called, still going through the rest of the papers in her hand.

“There’s more on the coffee table!” Liz called back.

Sam’s head came up as Liz came in, pulling back her hair into a ponytail. “How do you do that?”

Liz grinned. “It’s a skill.” She picked up the stack and brought them to Sam in the kitchen. “Can you believe it? We must have gotten thirty of those in the last couple of days.”

Looking over the random bits of paper spread out all over the countertop, Sam blew out a breath in disbelief. “How have I missed them?”

“I’ve been taking them down. And you’ve been at the lab so much studying that you’ve only been home to sleep.”

Sam tipped her head in agreement, and sat down on a stool beside Liz. “But what are they doing here?”

Liz was about to answer but was cut off by a rap on the door. “Come in!”

Rodney poked his head cautiously around the door. “Are you decent?”

Sam rolled her eyes. “It’s half-past noon, Rodney. You’re the only one who sits around all day trying to disprove the Grand Unified Theory in your underwear.”

“Besides, would we have let you in if we weren’t?” Liz asked.

“I can dream, can’t I?” Moving to where they were still sorting through messages. Rodney picked one up. “What’s this? _‘From Gero in 530 – Fridge still has bad smell. Please advise.’_ ”

Sam shook her head for lack of an explanation. “Somehow our place has become the new destination for maintenance requests.” 

He grabbed another one. “ _‘My Mother-in-law is coming to visit. I need a new ceiling light fixture in the living room ASAP. Sincerely, Damian from 632._ ’ How many apartments does this building _have_?”

They looked at each other blankly until Liz spoke again. “I have a theory about these messages.”

Sam perked up. “Oh?”

“I think that the residents are giving you their requests to give to Mr. O’Neill because they know he likes you.”

“I’m not following you.”

“You have to admit that he can be a little…intimidating. And he doesn’t always make himself available to deal with the tenant’s grievances. So, since they all know you’re dating, maybe they think that he won’t be as annoyed to hear their requests coming from you and he’ll be more likely to…do something about them.”

Since it was currently a sore spot in her life, she latched onto the dating thing. “How do they know we’re dating? Have they _seen_ us together?”

Liz hesitated. “Well, no”-

“Then how do they know?”

Liz raised an eyebrow. “You mean aside from the sexually-charged atmosphere surrounding the two of you and the odd noises coming from closets to which only Mr. O’Neill has the keys?”

Sam felt her face warm. “You’ve made your point.” 

She set an elbow on the counter and leaned her chin on her hand. “I don’t know, though. What’s the point in being the superintendent if your tenants are too scared to let you do your work?”

Liz lifted a shoulder. “He probably doesn’t realize it.”

Rodney scoffed. “Or maybe he does and scares them on purpose. Personally, I think it’s a brilliant idea. Keep the peons in line, I say.”

“That’s because you’re an opportunistic genius with no conscience.” Sam said bluntly.

He couldn’t exactly argue the point. “This is true.”

Liz threw her bag over her shoulder with a grin. “I’m going to T’s for lunch. You guys want to come?”

“I can’t,” Sam replied reluctantly. “I have a study group to go to. I just came by to grab some notes for Stellar Structure and Evolution.”

“Suit yourself. See you later.”

Seeing that Rodney hadn’t left with Liz, she willed herself to be patient. “Did you need something?”

“Uh, yes. As you know, every semester I tutor some of the undergraduate students who are having trouble making it through the physics program.”

“Yes,” she said, in an expectant tone.

“Well, I’m going to be conducting some screening interviews this afternoon to determine the best candidates, and it’s possible”-

As it turned out, he’d just used up all the patience she had today. “What does this have to do with me?”

He shifted nervously on his feet. “I had flyers printed to announce time and place of the interviews, but there may have been a typo in the unit number listed, and that typo may have turned out to be your apartment number…” he trailed off then.

“ _May_ have?” She asked softly. Menacingly.

He gulped. “Was.”

She closed her eyes. “How many?”

“How many what?”

“How many flyers.” She said through clenched teeth.

“500.”

“ _Rodney!_ ”

“Hey, I have to conduct interviews, don’t I? I’m doing very sensitive, ground-breaking work here, and if these kids want to help me, they better be of the highest caliber. And how do you get interviews on a campus? You put up flyers, and - do you know how expensive it is to reprint 500”-

She held up a hand. “Help you…let me get this straight: you’re interviewing undergrads to write your papers for you?”

Rodney sounded insulted. “It’s not cheating. I’ll be doing all the work. They’ll just be…assisting. You know, they’ll do the typing, some random grunt research if necessary - what?”

She stood up with a flourish. “You’re supposed to be tutoring these students, Rodney, not operating an academic sweatshop!”

“Can you think of a better way to guide these obviously wayward students back to the waterhole of theoretical physics?”

Ignoring the terrible metaphor, she glared at him with contempt. “So not only are you interrogating these kids over their worthiness to accept a job with _no_ pay and _no_ credit, but you’re sending them through a scavenger hunt just to get to the _interview_? What is it, a test of will? Should I tell them they have thirteen hours in which to solve the labyrinth?”

He face colored. “No! No. I wrote the correct apartment number on every notice I could find, but I might have missed some. Look, I’m asking – just point them in this direction, would you?”

She took a deep breath. Funny, but she’d never had an anger problem until she’d moved into this building. “I…can’t believe I’m agreeing to this. Fine. ” 

“Thank you!” And then the coward ran away.

“Just…keep it within reasonable limits, okay?” she shouted after him as he went back to his side of the hallway. She didn’t want to get any more involved than she had to. She had her own problems.

“Sure!” he called back. Very cheerfully.

Why did she even bother?

\-----

It wasn’t until the next afternoon in the stairwell – he was going down and she was climbing up – that she was able to give him the maintenance requests she and Liz had accumulated.

“What are these?” he asked, once he had all the scraps in his hands (in all: 42 requests written on note paper, napkins, various types of cardboard, and one torn-off piece of a t-shirt).

“Various wishes and needs from your tenants.”

He frowned. “And why do you have them?”

His scowling brought her attention to the crease between his eyebrows, and it wasn’t too far to go to admire the very sexy scar that slashed through his left eyebrow. She really wanted to kiss it. Like right now.

And then she realized that he was still waiting for an answer to his question. “Oh, uh, apparently the other residents think you’ll be less likely to kill the messenger if the messenger is me.”

“Why?”

Explaining it would probably make things a little awkward. “It’s probably best that you don’t think too much about it.”

Half-smiling, he nodded. “Nevertheless, I’ll try to make it clear that these should come directly to me from now on.”

“Thanks.” She swallowed heavily as his went down another step, bringing his body very close to hers.

“You know,” he said quietly, “There’s a very convenient closet just at the bottom of the stairs.”

Oh, she knew. She’d gotten very familiar with that closet in the last month. “I really want to, but…”

“You have studying to do,” he finished.

“Yeah,” she replied sadly.

He ran two fingers lightly over the curve of her ear. “Midterms?”

“Yeah,” she breathed. Where had her vocabulary gone?

“Too bad.”

“ _Yeah_.” All those big words she’d learned for the GREs.

He dropped his hand and cleared his throat. And took a very deep breath. “I’ll guess I’ll see you later then?”

She nodded and did the same. Catching one of the notes out of the corner of eye, she took it out of his shirt pocket.

“What are you doing?”

She held it up. “This one I can actually fix.”

“Give me that!”

She laughed at the annoyance in his voice, but let him snatch it back.

Then she passed him quickly and resumed her climb.

And grinned for two flights straight.

\-----

By 4:00 she’d had enough studying. Or not so much the studying, but the _not_ studying.

She couldn’t get her mind off her…problem with Jack. So she decided to go upstairs and consult an expert.

The door swung open only seconds after she thumped on it. “The food’s…not here.”

Vala! Just the person she wanted to see. “Sorry. I need to talk to you.”

Vala nodded and made a ‘go-ahead’ move with her hand. “Alright.”

Cam walked into the frame behind her and waved. “Hi Sam.”

She forced a smile. “Hi Cameron.” 

As soon as he was gone Sam dropped it and winced. “Privately.”

“O-kay,” Vala stepped out and shut the door. “What is it?”

“Say I’d been going out with this guy – or not going out with this guy.” She sighed. She was struggling a little. “Say I knew this guy pretty well, and I wanted to take the relationship to the next level, but we were having trouble getting together to go out…how would I go about it? Hypothetically.”

Vala looked a little too surprised and gleeful for Sam’s taste. “You’re talking about a booty call.”

“No! No, I’m not. I’m talking about increasing the intimacy of two people who already have a strong connection…” She trailed off. “Okay, yes, that’s what I’m talking about.”

If Vala’s grin got any wider it was going to dislocate her ears. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Just because you don’t want to attend pre-game doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the main event.”

This actually wasn’t as bad as Sam thought it was going to be. “So what do I do?”

She appeared to seriously consider it for a moment. “Ring him up and get him to come over. You can be blunt, talk dirty and get him riled up right away, or you can be subtle – slowly build the tension.”

Sam was listening so attentively she could have been sitting in a lecture. “That last part, how do I do that?”

Vala nodded approvingly. “Good choice. Make up an excuse – something that’s valid so that he’ll buy it but also something that’ll make him wonder about your true intentions. Like: Oh, I seem to have a clog in my drain. I need you to come over and clean my pipes.”

Oh, _God_.

Vala put a finger to her lips. “Or something less corny and much less disturbing.”

“Right!” Sam said a little too brightly. “Thanks a lot.”

“Any time.”

\-----

She went directly back to her apartment and paced in front of the telephone.

Vala was right. Dinner took effort and advanced social skills, while this…well, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t be working on something, but they didn’t necessarily have to take a lot of time…although it would be nice if they-

Yeah, she was putting way too much thought into it.

All she needed to do was pick up the phone, call Jack, sound horny, and make it very obvious that she needed him to come over immediately and do something about it.

Piece of cake. Hmm, should she go get cake? It might sweeten the deal.

So to speak.

Okay, no more stalling. She could do this.

She called his cell phone and prayed while it rang that he wouldn’t pick up.

But then a gruff voice came over the line. “O’Neill.” 

Damn it.

“Hello?”

“Hi Jack! It’s me, uh, Sam.”

“Hey,” the way his tone immediately softened had her going a little weak in the knees. “Something wrong?”

“No! Well, sort of.” Yeah, this was going great. “See, my microwave is…overheating! Yes, it’s overheating. And I was wondering if you could, um, come over and take a look at it. Right now.”

“You want me to come take a look at your microwave?”

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“ _Really_?” He almost sounded a little disappointed…

Oh, to hell with it. “No, Jack.” Wow, that was actually a little…husky.

There was a pause. A long pause.

“I’ll be right over.”

\-----

Things were just starting to get interesting when someone knocked on her door.

One of Jack’s hands was skimming the inside of her thigh and the other had just made it to her chest, so she was gasping when he said lowly, “Ignore it.”

Sure, you betcha. Or, at least, that’s what she wanted to say. It actually came out as “suah, bet-MUNH.” 

The man had really nimble fingers.

And she wanted to ignore it. Did she ever want to – oh GOD – ignore it. But the knocking was getting more insistent, and why did she ever let him put the damn thing back if it was going to be so much trouble?

Of course, without the door they wouldn’t be doing _this_ on the sofa, but then there was always Jack’s apartment with its three unchristened bedrooms, and –

“Wait, wait,” she panted out. She slid out from under him, ran to the door, threw it open, saw the young redhead, yelled “Across the hall!” and slammed it shut again. 

She was about to close the distance to the sofa fast enough to put skid marks on the carpet, but she was crushed back against the hard surface of the wood before she could take one step.

On second thought, about the door –

Something was beeping. Beeping? What the hell could be beeping at a time like this?

He pulled away. “I have to”- 

Yes, kissing. Kissing was better than talking. Until he pulled back again. “It’s my beeper.” 

This couldn’t be happening to her.

“No,” she protested, and then raised her right leg to circle his hip. He moaned. Loudly.

Yes! Score one for the geek.

The beeper was now beeping _and_ vibrating on the kitchen counter, so she wasn’t terribly surprised when she felt his hands on her face pulling her gently back. His thumbs stroked her cheekbones idly while he controlled his breathing.

His eyes kept darting down to her lips and then up again. “I have to, uh, check the thing.”

She nodded jerkily. “Okay.”

Sagging against the door - which she now loved and cursed in equal measure – she tried futilely to keep her eyes off his ass as he walked towards the counter.

“It’s a 911.” He said flatly.

She laughed a little desperately. “You’re joking? Tell me you’re joking.”

“No. Unit 410.”

She had a bad feeling about this. “Is that Jay Felger’s apartment?”

He nodded as re-buttoned his shirt.

Her heart sank. “Yeah, you’d better go.”

His eyes went very dark, and she was pretty sure this little interruption was not going to help future landlord-tenant relations.

She rubbed her forehead. “Look, maybe we should just”-

He made a cutting gesture with is hand. “No! Do not finish that sentence.” 

He leaned in and kissed her hard, and she forgot her own name. “Just remember where we were.”

“No problem.” She replied breathlessly when he finished.

“Good.”

And then he was gone.

She stood in the middle of the kitchen and gazed sightlessly at her empty apartment.

So close, and yet so far.

Groaning at her misfortune, she shuffled into the living room and fell face first onto the still-warm sofa.

She _knew_ she shouldn’t have made that crack about Star Wars during Combustion Theory last week. George Lucas had somehow heard her and now she was never going to have sex again.


End file.
